by Chad Millman
Eighteen minutes into the game and there were already four touchdowns on the scoreboard, all of them on long plays, one of them record-tying, and one of them a fumble returned for a score. The second quarter wasn’t even half over. “No one,” Noll said after the game, “could deliver a knockout punch.”
Although Bradshaw tried. With twenty-six seconds left in the first half and the game still tied, he called a run-pass option from the Cowboys’ seven-yard line. Sprinting right he found Bleier alone in the end zone and lofted a ball high into the air. Leaping over a Cowboy, Bleier snatched the ball from the sky with both hands and fell onto his back. On the Steelers radio broadcast, Cope screamed, “Would you have expected Rocky Bleier to turn into Nijinsky?”
His partner wondered aloud, “Who is Nijinsky?”
Cope, exasperated, answered, “He was a great ballet dancer.”
At the end of the half, the Steelers led 21-14 and had gained 271 yards to the Cowboys’ 102. But Stallworth, who had more than a hundred yards receiving and two touchdowns in the first half, had cramps that kept him on the bench as the third quarter got under way. And without him, the Steelers’ offense made as much noise as a bag of cotton. The Flex limited Harris to just forty-four yards on fourteen carries. Bradshaw’s only viable weapon was Swann. “I couldn’t do anything,” Bradshaw said years later.
The Cowboys came out inspired in the third. The Steelers’ first drive went three plays and lost four yards. Their second went four plays (including a false-start penalty) and lost six yards. After that, midway through the third quarter, Dallas got the ball back at the Steelers’ forty-two. After an incomplete pass, Dorsett ran for four yards and Staubach completed a pass for eight. First down. Three plays later, Dorsett picked up another five, for another first down. Two plays later it was seven yards from Dorsett, setting up a third and three from the Steelers’ ten.
As Staubach dropped back to pass he spotted tight end Jackie Smith wide open in the back of the end zone. Smith was thirty-eight years old and had retired the previous season after fifteen years with the St. Louis Cardinals. He was as sure-handed a tight end who ever played, one of the fourteen future Hall of Famers playing that day. That September, needing one more tight end, Landry had coaxed Smith out of retirement, with the bait of one more chance to play in the Super Bowl. Now he was about to score a game-tying touchdown to keep his team alive.
Except that as the ball sailed gently toward him, Smith purposely slid to get his body underneath it. The pass, which was wobbling, hit him square in the numbers before he could get his hands to his chest. It bounced off his pads, off his fingers, and onto the end-zone turf. “Bless his heart,” said the Cowboys radio announcer. “He’s got to be the sickest man in America.”
The Cowboys had to settle for a field goal.
Heading into the fourth quarter, the Steelers clung to a four-point lead, 21-17, and they’d get the ball back with 12:08 remaining in the game. Bradshaw, as he had done all season, took over. On a third and eight from the Steelers seventeen, he completed a nine-yard pass for a first down. On the next play, he connected with Lynn Swann for thirteen more yards. Two plays later, a long bomb to Swann led to a thirty-three-yard pass interference call against Dallas, giving the Steelers the ball at the Cowboys’ twenty-three. “I remember the ball was in the air and I was looking right into Randy White’s face,” says Ray Pinney. “I saw disappointment. I couldn’t see the play but I knew from his expression that it was bad for them and good for us. He was crushed.”
Three plays later, on a third and four from the seventeen, Bradshaw dropped back to pass. Henderson came blitzing untouched up the middle and pulled him down by the sleeve of his left arm. Afterward, as a ref stood over them, Henderson took his time climbing off Bradshaw, taunting him until Bradshaw could get himself up. The play didn’t count, as the refs had blown it dead before the snap because of a delay-of-game penalty, only it was too loud for anyone to hear. But Harris, the mellowest man on the Steelers, took issue with Henderson’s attitude. As the linebacker stood up, Harris confronted him. “Even before that Super Bowl he was trying to get into the psyche of the Steelers,” says Harris. “And when he did that I thought he crossed the line and I had to go over there, you know what I mean, and I was ready for whatever happened.”
Really, anything could have happened. Before the game Henderson had mixed powder and water and poured it into an empty nasal spray bottle. He hid the inhaler in a small hip pocket in his uniform and then, on the sideline before that series, sprayed the drug up his nose. When Harris got in his face, they jawed at each other for close to twenty seconds, with Henderson finally replying, “Fuck you in your ass, and your mama, too.”
Henderson had been shadowing Harris all game, keeping the running back from making the quick cutbacks he relied on. But in the huddle, Harris commanded, “Give me the ball.” As Bradshaw surveyed the line of scrimmage, he saw the middle of the field wide open and called the trap the Steelers had worked on all week. As Harris took the ball, the line parted, and he ran untouched twenty-two yards into the end zone. “I just said, ‘Get in the end zone, get in the end zone,’” Harris says. The score, with a little more than seven minutes left in the game, was Steelers 28, Cowboys 17.
It stayed that way for nineteen seconds.
Before the kickoff, Noll specifically instructed Gerela to boot it deep. But as he approached the tee, Gerela slipped and the ball sputtered in a slow, awkward bounce to Randy White, on the field to be the lead blocker and wearing a cast on his left hand. As he scooped up the ball and ran, cradling the ball against his cast, Dungy hit him on his side, and the ball squirted into the air. It bounced around on the ground before a tangled pile of Steelers and Cowboys could tame it. Off to the side was Steelers linebacker Dennis Winston, who had been trailing on the play. “All of a sudden he drops to a knee and starts to dig through the pile,” remembers Stoudt.
“And he’s digging and digging,” says Petersen. “He was really out of the play. But then the refs pull everyone apart and the guy who comes out with the ball is Dennis. I once roomed with him. He could be very strongwilled.”
The Steelers had the ball at the Cowboys’ nineteen-yard line.
On the next play, Bradshaw looked at Swann in the huddle and called “42-I Takeoff.” Bradshaw dropped back, pump-faked, and unleashed a rising rope down the middle of the field. Flashing through the end zone, Swann leaped, kicking his legs as though they were propelling him higher, snared the pass, came down on his knees, and slid out of the back of the end zone. The Steelers had opened up an eighteen-point lead.
The Cowboys didn’t quit. On the next drive, Staubach threw for seven yards, then ran for eighteen, then threw for seventeen more. He handed off to Dorsett, who scampered for twenty-nine. Then Staubach completed three straight passes, including a seven-yard touchdown pass, making the score 35-24, Steelers. In a little more than four minutes he had driven Dallas eighty-nine yards. They lined up for an onside kick and the Steelers put Dungy on the front line of their “hands” team—the players who are expected to recover any bouncing balls. “I wanted them to kick it to me,” Dungy says. “I had good hands. I was thinking about the Randy White fumble I had caused and how this was going to be my day and I was going to ice this game and be the hero. Then they kicked it to me, and I fumbled it.”
When the Cowboys recovered the ensuing onside kick, several Steelers could be heard on the sideline having flashbacks to the defense’s season-long late-game collapses. “We’re doing it again!” they yelled.
It looked like it. Over the next two minutes Staubach surgically picked Pittsburgh apart. A twenty-two-yard pass to Pearson down the right side; a twenty-five-yard pass to Pearson down the middle. Nine more to Dorsett. And then four yards for a touchdown to Butch Johnson. Twenty-two seconds remained and both teams lined up for an onside kick. Again.
This time, Bleier stood in the middle of the field, just across from the Cowboys kicker. “I was thinking about Dungy and how he had
flubbed the last kick and I was saying to myself, ‘please don’t kick it to me,’” says Bleier. Nearby, Dungy says he was thinking the exact same thing. The slow roller bounced gently into Bleier’s arms. He cradled the ball, and the Steelers were Super Bowl champs. Again. Bradshaw, with his finger wagging in the air while Steelers celebrated all around him, was named the game’s MVP, thanks to Super Bowl records of 318 passing yards and four touchdowns.
As the players walked off the field, the Cowboys’ radio broadcaster said, “It was the triumph of the blue collar over the white collar.”
That night, the Rooneys held a party at the Fort Lauderdale resort where the team had stayed. And when the players returned to Pittsburgh, the city celebrated with a party at Point State Park. It was five below zero that day, but fans began staking out their places before sunrise. By noon, when the first of the Steelers stood on a makeshift stage to thank them for their support, 120,000 Steelers backers had packed the park. “It was like family,” says Stoudt. “They were just as much a part of it all as we were.”
Says Dungy: “Everyone in Pittsburgh felt the team was theirs.”
The players all felt the warmth from their fans, the elation that comes from winning. Their legacies were secure. For the rest of their lives every player on that team, from Cliff Stoudt to Joe Greene, would be treated like a Carnegie once they crossed into town over the Hot Metal Bridge. At a time when the city’s industry was crumbling, when people were fleeing Pittsburgh in search of a town with a future, the players made being from Aliquippa and the North Side and everywhere else in Iron City worth bragging about. And not just for three hours on Sunday or from September to January, but for years. Over an entire decade they had played the way the city worked and lived—or at least the way it once had. That reminded everyone who lived between the Monongahela, Allegheny, and Ohio Rivers that what they believed, their way of life, wasn’t completely disappearing and hadn’t been discarded, like scrap iron. To work hard, to work together, to play for team above self could still lead to greatness. If not immediately, then one day soon. Again.
But as they listened to those speeches on that bitterly cold day in Pittsburgh, and they cheered for their heroes, most people there had already heard everything they needed to. It happened after the game, when the Steelers had been World Champions for less than twenty minutes. Players, coaches, owners, reporters, cameramen—all of them were gathered in the locker room, crowding around a makeshift podium for the televised Super Bowl trophy presentation. The Chief was up there. So were Dan Rooney and Pete Rozelle and Chuck Noll. The players stood at their lockers in various states of undress, some in just their grass-stained football pants, others with their shoulder pads on, loosely shifting as they hugged and laughed and waited for the trophy to be handed from the commissioner to the owner. They yelled “Chief” as Art Rooney spoke, thanking them, thanking Noll. And then it was their coach’s turn to talk. The room grew silent. “You know, I said one thing to our football team after the game, and I sincerely believe it,” Noll said. “I don’t think we’ve peaked yet. And we’re looking forward to even bigger and better things.”
Then the room—and an entire city watching on TV—erupted in cheers.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanking people who helped you put together a book is an impossible task. But it would be ungracious not to try.
First, we owe a debt of gratitude to our agent, Richard Abate, who not only thought of the idea that became the book you’re now holding, but had the genius idea of putting us together to write it. We’re also grateful to Bill Shinker of Gotham, who was not only kind enough to publish our work, but also put us under the steady guidance of Patrick Mulligan, our editor. Both Patrick and editorial assistant Travers Johnson provided expert advice—and friendly reminders to keep moving forward.
Chad would also like to thank his pals at ESPN The Magazine, especially his bosses, GM, Gary Hoenig, and editor in chief, Gary Belsky, who were both understanding and encouraging about the project. Chris Berend, Neil Fine, and Sue Hovey also tried their best not to constantly remind Chad that his deadline was looming. Charles Rosen and Douglas Cameron, the brilliant minds behind the New York ad agency Amalgamated, helped us shape the culture wars between the Steelers and the Cowboys. At espn.com, editor extraordinaire and Pittsburgh native John Banks let Chad bend his ear constantly and filled his notebooks with good stories and great leads from the old days. As did Ed Bouchette from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Vito Stellino, an old PG scribe now at the Times-Union in Jacksonville, Joe Gordon, the former Steelers PR man, and Art Rooney Jr. It’s easy to see why the teams from that era not only achieved greatness, but remained close for decades afterward. The Rooney clan set a fine example.
Shawn thanks all of the steelworkers from Aliquippa, Beaver Falls, Braddock, Homestead, McKeesport, the South Side, Youngstown, Chicago, Baltimore, Gary, Indiana, and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, from the 1970s who were a part of Steelworkers Fight Back!; his mother, Mary Jo; his sisters, Tami and Teri, and his brother, Patrick. Art Louderback at the Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh provided access to the J&L Steel company archives and Craig Britcher and Robert Stakeley from the Heinz History Center’s Sports Museum for their help detailing the history of football in western Pennsylvania. Ed Sadlowski, Bob Gumpert, Steve Early, Clem Balanoff, Jim Balanoff, Andy Kmec, Oliver Montgomery, Tony Franchini, Joey Diven, Ronnie Demarski, Ed James, Ronnie Weisen, Father Jack O’Malley, Monsignor Charles Rice, Peter Mamula, Ronnie Mamula, I. W. Abel, Ed Ayoub, Joe Rauh, Walter Burke, and scores of others passed through the Coyne household. Patrick Coyne Sr. touched the lives of every one of them and like the city that forged him, he hit with everything he had until the very end.
NOTES
The bulk of the material about the Steelers for this book was culled from thirty interviews with former players, coaches, scouts, and team executives who played a role on those 1970 teams. We owe a special debt to Andy Russell, Rocky Bleier, Dick Hoak, Joe Gordon, Gerry Mullins, Dan Radakovich, Franco Harris, Ted Petersen, Tony Dungy, Mike Wagner, Bill Nunn, Randy Grossman, Art Rooney Jr., and Joe Greene, who were especially generous with their time and stories. They never deflected a question and never gave anything less than an honest answer.
Additionally, the authors read more than two dozen books about the era of the Super 70s. These were especially helpful: About Three Bricks Shy . . . And the Load Filled Up by Roy Blount Jr., Steel Dynasty by Bill Chastain, Ruanaidh by Art Rooney Jr., and My 75 Years with the Steelers by Dan Rooney, Andrew E. Maisch, and David F. Halaas, The Murchisons by Jane Wolfe, Running Tough by Tony Dorsett and Harry Frommer, Duane Thomas and the Fall of America’s Team by Duane Thomas and Paul Zimmerman, The League by David Harris, Brand NFL by Michael Oriard, Steelworkers in America by David Brody, Which Side Are You On? by Thomas Geoghegan, And the Wolf Finally Came by John P. Hoerr, Portraits in Steel by David H. Wollman and Donald R. Inman and, Making Steel by Mark Reutter.
One note about the sourcing for this book: Because the stories for so many of the people told in this book have been widely told before, generally accepted facts and well-known information gathered from multiple sources were not cited. Also, game stats, season records, and play-by-play pulled from media guides were also excluded.
Prologue
Page 1 Because of what Joe Namath “Super Bowl’s Status; Game Rated in Class With World Series After American League’s Major Upset,” The New York Times, Jan. 14, 1969.
Page 2 “They give steel to” Address Accepting the Presidential Nomination at the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida, Richard Nixon, Aug. 8, 1968.
Chapter 1
Page 9 These were the “The Winning Ways of a Thirty Year Loser,” Sports Illustrated, Nov. 23, 1964.
Page 9 Friends who hung Ibid.
Page 9 One of his top players Ibid.
Page 10 Once, when he was trying Art Rooney Jr., Ruanaidh (Pittsburgh: Art Rooney Jr., 2008), p. 88.
Page 11 The old pros Ibid.
, p. 62.
Page 12 “I like John” Ibid., p. 63.
Page 12 And Dan Rooney Bill Chastain, Steel Dynasty (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2005), p. 7.
Page 12 “The Rooneys were” Rooney Jr., Ruanaidh, p. 241.
Page 12 In high school Chastain, Steel Dynasty, p. 7.
Page 13 “We met for” Dan Rooney, Andrew E. Maisch and David F. Halaas, My 75 Years With the Pittsburgh Steelers and the NFL (Cambridge, MA.: Da Capo Press, 2007), p. 125.
Page 14 He’d end up “Steelers Winning Ticket,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Jan. 18, 1969.
Page 14 Several days after Rooney, Maisch, Halaas, My 75 Years . . .
Page 14 “When I first” “Steelers Winning Ticket,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Jan. 18, 1969.
Chapter 2
Page 16 “hell with the lid off” “Pittsburg,” Atlantic Monthly, Jan. 1868.
Page 16 Pittsburgh, without exception Anthony Trollope, North America (Philadelphia, PA.: J.B. Lippincott and Company, 1863), p. 75.
Page 18 “Gorilla Men” David Brody, Steelworkers in America, the Nonunion Era (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1960), p. 33.
Chapter 3
Page 20 “First I’ve got” Roy Blount Jr., About Three Bricks Shy of a Load And The Load Filled Up (Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 2004), p. 121.
Page 20 Because Brown’s teams Chastain, Steel Dynasty, p. 9.
Page 21 Noll was always Rooney Jr., Ruanaidh, p. 241.
